A month has slipped by past my original deadline and I'm glad it did. Being overdue has put me in crunchtime but the lack of a firm deadline keeps me from burning out. Although I've got a major career and life change no more than three months in the future which is driving me forward.
I've been doing serious playtesting 3-5 times weekly and I've gotten a lot more revisions in and more recently a focus on readability. I am currently trying to pass a fundamental design test as follows:
Set the player down with your game.
Give them only the character creation rules.
Can they make a character without any guidance?
Step 2, give them the combat rules and have them run combat.
Is it intuitive? Are there any hiccups? What areas do people frequently forget or misinterpret?
It has certainly been eye opening and gives me a finer lens with which to tweak things and to instill some clarity.
I was fortunate enough to have a good friend of mine who is equal parts board-game fanatic and statistician take a look over the MK I rule set. After nearly two years of playtesting he's the first to bring up a fundamental flaw in the die rolling and the we have appropriated 3d6 in place of the d20. As a result I've had to do some major math-wizardry by taking an existing option for Titanic PCs and and applying it unilaterally and seeing the consequences. This entails rewriting a lot of formulas, retooling a number of basic combat mechanics and a grand sweeping change to Saving Throws. That is why the post on Initiative has been delayed, but fortunately Armor has been spared and will remain the same. The downside is that PC's are now universally a cut above the common man, on the brightside the PC's are now rockstars.
As a result I've also become a secret member of the d12 cult.
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